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More on this story. "Christians flee Iraqi city after killings, threats, officials say," by Mohammed Tawfeeq for CNN, October 11:
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- At least 900 Christian families have fled Mosul in the past week, terrified by a series of killings and threats by Muslim extremists ordering them to convert to Islam or face possible death, officials said Saturday.
The attacks may have been prompted by Christian demonstrations ahead of provincial elections, which are to be held by the end of January, the deputy governor of Nineveh province said.
Deputy Gov. Khasro Goran said 13 Christians have been slain in the past two weeks in Mosul, about 260 miles (420 kilometers) north of Baghdad. Fleeing Christians have sought refuge in monasteries and churches and with family members in other towns, an Interior Ministry official said.
The attacks began after hundreds of Christians took to the streets in Mosul and surrounding villages and towns, seeking greater representation on provincial councils, whose members will be chosen in the local elections.
Duraid Mohammed Kashmoula, Nineveh's governor, told The Associated Press that the exodus was "a major displacement."
"Of course, al Qaeda elements are behind this campaign against Christians," Kashmoula told AP.
The Interior Ministry official said the homes of three families were destroyed with explosives Saturday after the occupants left. No injuries were reported.
A week ago, leaflets were distributed in several predominantly Christian neighborhoods, threatening families to "either convert to Islam or pay the jizyah or leave the city or face death," said the Interior Ministry official.
Historically, jizyah is a tax paid by non-Muslims in exchange for protection.
One wonders if the author realizes how appropriately mob-like the "protection" explanation comes across in the context of this story. Anyway, this demand is, of course, in accordance with Qur'an 9:29: "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."
Goran said that a few days after the leaflets were passed out, gunmen set up checkpoints in parts of Mosul, stopping vehicles to inspect identification papers, searching for Christian names or other signs of religious affiliation. Many of the Christians killed were targeted in this way, he said.
Bashir Azoz, 45, told AP he fled his Mosul home after gunmen warned a neighbor to leave or be killed.
"Where is the government and its security forces as these crimes take place every day?" asked Azoz, a carpenter who is staying with his wife and three children in a town about 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Mosul, according to AP.
The Rev. Bolis Jacob, of Mosul's Mar Afram Church, told AP he couldn't understand the attacks.
"We respect the Islamic religion and the Muslim clerics," he said. "We don't know under what religion's pretexts these terrorists work."
Goran said police have set up security checkpoints in Christian neighborhoods.
In response to the violence, Iraqi Defense Minister Abdul Qader al-Obaidi visited Mosul on Saturday morning, conducting meetings with local authorities and military commanders.
His spokesman, Mohammed al-Askari, said that in addition to ordering more checkpoints in Christian neighborhoods, al-Obaidi ordered more troops deployed, additional security patrols and an increase in aerial surveillance of Christian areas.
Al-Obaidi also ordered more guards for Christian clerics, al-Askari said.
Posted by Marisol at October 12, 2008 12:02 AM
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There is no compulsion to religion... but we may kill you anyway.
Posted by: profitsbeard![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 12, 2008 1:16 AM
What is shocking is that a 'religion' santions lies and violence, to cover which, it uses a smoke-screen of 'Peace', followed by hostility to have it repeated by western leaders: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010917-11.html
What many cannot see is that this same 'religion' has a political agenda with a discriminatory legal system to support that political agenda. Fair to say, Islam is a political system, under the cloak of a religion.
at October 12, 2008 1:43 AM
On the other hand, "the surge is working." The "surge" has worked. Victory is in view.
Posted by: Hugh at October 12, 2008 9:14 AM
Well Hugh, the Christians have definitely surged out of Mosul and Iraq :)
Posted by: Mister Ghost at October 12, 2008 10:59 AM
it is not a surge...it is a redeployment..
Posted by: pulsar182 at October 12, 2008 11:25 AM
I guess this will be George Bushs legacy; To pave the way for an Iraq without Christians. How ironic for a man who claims to have faith in Christ.
I never liked that man and I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if he turns out to have been on the payroll of the Saudis one day, since he's in the Oil business. Corrupt politicians like him will cause the downfall of the West.
Posted by: seville844 at October 12, 2008 2:38 PM
"The Rev. Bolis Jacob, of Mosul's Mar Afram Church, told AP he couldn't understand the attacks.
"We respect the Islamic religion and the Muslim clerics," he said. "We don't know under what religion's pretexts these terrorists work.""
This guy has been drinking too much sacramental wine if he never noticed any Islamic texts that might lead to this.
at October 12, 2008 3:38 PM
The good reverend cannot understand because the Christians lived under peace with the Muslims before the was invaded and occupied. This appears to be more of a false-flag operation in order to pit one group (Christians) against another (Muslims) without this having been the case prior. There is no proof of this that is public yet; but it is part of the occupiers' modis operandi. There is also no proof that the leaflets threatening the Christians were actually committed by Muslims.
Posted by: 5PillarScribe at October 12, 2008 4:52 PM
This is genocide against Christians. Why isn't the world crying out against this evil?
Posted by: James Martel at October 12, 2008 5:23 PM
Observe, ladies and gentlemen. We appear to have attracted yet another Muslim Dementor.
Sir: you of the '5 pillars' - your claims are nonsense. "The Christians lived under peace with the Muslims" - horsefeathers!
Peace all right - so long as they let the Muslims walk all over them. That isn't peace. That's a 'relationship' defined as: Muslim abuses dhimmi, dhimmi submits without resistance, without complaint. That's a sick relationship. When we see two people in that kind of 'relationship', in our countries, we call the Abuser a criminal and an evil person.
Dhimmitude = a condition of permanent and crushing humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity. A religion-based apartheid in which one side, the Muslim Dominator, reserves the right to do pretty much anything he pleases, any time he feels like it, to the other side, the non-Muslim near-slave, who is treated not as a person, but as a Thing.
Let me inform you that I have read Bat Yeor, 'The Dhimmi' and 'The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam'. I have also read Andrew Bostom, 'The Legacy of Jihad'.
Both authors spent quite a lot of time describing the manner by which Muslims gained power in places like Mesopotamia, now Iraq, and then detailing the sheer nastiness of the process by which Arab Muslims systematically and pitilessly, over the centuries, reduced the original indigenous Christian and Jewish majority populations to mere remnants, terrified and crushed and cruelly exploited.
I found the detailed, meticulously documented accounts, drawn from all periods of Muslim rule, to be exhausting; they left me feeling physically ill, as I contemplated the fact that one group of humans (Arab Muslims and then, later, Mamluk and Turkish and Kurdish Muslims) could be so fiendishly cruel, for so long, in so many ways, great and small, toward another group of humans whom they had reduced to utter helplessness. Reading the descriptions of what Muslims habitually and repeatedly did to the dhimmi populations, was like watching a mob of cruel, smirking little boys having fun skinning kittens alive.
Everything that is being done to the Christians of Iraq, by some of the Muslims there, today, has been done before, over and over, with slight variations, by this or that group of Muslims, to this or that group of non-Muslims, at various times, in every part of the Islamosphere.
So it isn't due to 'the occupation'. In fact, it is the removal of Saddam Hussein, who for his own selfish reasons kept some kind of a lid on the various Muslim factions, thus allowing the Christians to get out from under (just a little), has merely allowed the Muslims of Iraq to set about re-dhimmifying the Christians.
To conclude the argument, I will cite the first part of a knowledgeable posting by Mr Hugh Fitzgerald, a member of the jihadwatch board, describing what happened not during, but after the end of, a previous 'occupation'.
"The British forces left Iraq in 1932. Within five months the Muslims were massacring the Christian Assyrians.
"Both Kurds and Arabs took part. How many died? Some say hundreds of thousands.
"William Saroyan wrote a book about it: "70,000 Assyrians."
"Perhaps it was as "few" as 70,000.
"There have been cases -- and you can find them on line -- of Christian girls kidnapped, or sent to work for a Muslim family (there was one on-line recently, about a girl who had gone to work for a family of a local Kurdish leader, tried to escape, was murdered, and her body somehow returned to her family.
"Nothing to be done, of course.
"Yes, I know American soldiers have found the Kurds, by comparison with the Arabs, eminently trustworthy and altogether splendid, but let's not get carried away.
"It was not the Turks alone who massacred the Armenians (in 1994-1895, and then from 1915-1920) but in a great many areas, it was Muslim Kurds who did the killing.
"In Kurdistan, in the 19th century, the treatment of non-Muslims (both Christians and Jews) was atrocious: the full dhimmitude, punctuated by murder."....
Posted by: Hugh at June 19, 2004 8:56 AM
*That*, ladies and gentlemen, is the real meaning of the 'peace' of dhimmitude that our Muslim spin-doctor wishes to extol, as he tries to pretend that what is happening to the Christians of Iraq today is some sort of novel thing; that everything was wonderful before those wicked infidel Americans invaded and upset the apple-cart.
It might be worth tracking down, and reading, William Saroyan's "70 000 Assyrians".
Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at October 13, 2008 4:08 AM
I bet that we don't have anymore visas to come here for those Christians..... they were all given to the Muslim Somalis so they can come here and help destroy everything.
at October 13, 2008 10:50 AM
There is no doubt that killing for any reason is horrible. However, here we go again with more killing in the name of god. There is more hate in the world because of religion than for any other reason. Religion breeds prejudice, genocide, sexism, and hatred for those who are unlike you. Let’s not forget our own religious problems right here at home. We have christian fundamentalists blowing up abortion clinics, killing and/or shunning gays, and out-casting other peoples of other faiths, or lack there of. All of this is done in the name of some fantasy or another about a magic man/men in the sky; talking snakes; a man living in a fish; angels with wings; creatures with parts from various animals (of which fossils have never been discovered). Let’s get real people. It was acceptable to believe in these things when the world was still thought to be flat, and the sun was thought to revolve around us. We needed FANTASY to explain things we could not. However, if more people would just pick up some science books and put down the fantasy bible, then we just may be able to get along. More people have died in the name of their god than for any other reason. You don’t see rational, educated people (who don’t believe in fantasy) going around acting ignorant by shunning people with hatred, killing at random, and starting holy wars. This is the twenty first century, yet almost half of our country think like we are living in the dark ages. Let us not forget that 95% of the scientific community are either Atheist or Agnostic. These are the most brilliant minds on our planet.
Posted by: Joel at October 15, 2008 11:09 AM
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